[This message is CC'ed to www-html-editor in accordance with what I
believe is the official way to suggest new elements. Please don't CC
www-html-editor on followups to this message.]
I hereby propose for inclusion in XHTML 2.0 a <footnote> element for
marking up footnotes.
Typically, footnotes in HTML are done using "[1]" (or similar) as the
reference to the footnote, with the number linked to a paragraph at the
bottom of the document. Here's an example of such markup:
<p>There exists no element for marking up footnotes[<a
href="#footnote1">1</a>] in the current XHTML 2.0 draft.</p>
<p id="footnote1">A footnote is a note of reference or comment at the
foot of a page.</p>
There are several problems with this approach:
* When printed, the footnote will be on the last page instead of on the
page containing the reference to the footnote.
* When copying text containing a footnote from one HTML document to
another, you need to copy two pieces of text from two different places
in the document.
* If you add a footnote in the middle of a document, you need to
renumber the footnotes in the rest of the document manually.
These problems could be solved by marking up the footnote as a footnote
and putting the footnote where it belongs, after the text that
references it, instead of at the end of the document.
With a <footnote> element, the above example would become:
<p>There exists no element for marking up footnotes<footnote>A footnote
is a note of reference or comment at the foot of a page.</footnote> in
the current XHTML 2.0 draft.</p>
Additional advantages of this approach:
* Cleaner markup; easier to read and write.
* User agents can handle presentation any way they want. For example, a
visual user agent might insert a footnote reference where the <footnote>
element is, and display the contents of the <footnote> element at the
bottom of the canvas when the reference is visible.
* Aural user agents can handle footnotes in a more user-friendly manner.
--
/Jonas